Abstract:

This paper defends the Causal Principle ‘everything that begins to exist has a cause’. Contrary to the claims of some scientists and philosophers, fundamental physics does not exclude efficient causation and quantum physics has not shown that the Causal Principle is violated given that (1) quantum events do not begin to exist without necessary conditions, (2) our current understanding of physics is limited, and (3) there are viable deterministic interpretations of quantum phenomena. On the other hand, (1) an inductive argument, (2) an argument from the concept of non-being, and (3) a Modus Tollens argument have been offered in the literature in support of the Causal Principle. I explain why the third argument is superior to the other two, and I develop this argument in response to the objection that, even if things do not begin to exist uncaused within our universe, it might be the case that our universe itself begun to exist uncaused (Oppy 2010; 2015; Almeida 2019).

Date: 26 March 2020
Time: 2pm to 4pm
Venue: Philosophy Meeting Room (AS3-05-23)

About the speaker:

Dr Andrew Loke (PhD, King’s College London) is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Hong Kong Baptist University. He is the author of God and Ultimate Origins (Springer Nature), The Origins of Divine Christology (Cambridge University Press), A Kryptic Model of the Incarnation (Routledge), and articles in leading international peer-reviewed journals such as Australasian Journal of Philosophy and International Journal for Philosophy of Religion.

All are welcome

Abstract:

Research in psychology suggests that moods vary across cultures in several
different ways. This means that any adequate theory of moods has to explain
how this is possible. Moreover, the theory has to predict the right amount and
the right kind of variation. The purpose of this talk is to put forward a new
account of moods—the patterns of attention view, according to which a mood
is nothing over and above a pattern of attention. I argue that the incredible
flexibility of the view can provide an elegant explanation of the ways that
moods have been proposed to vary across cultures. Between feelings
theories which give us too little cultural variation and cognitive theories that
give us too much, the patterns of attention theory gets it just right.

Date: 5 March 2020
Time: 2pm to 4pm
Venue: Philosophy Meeting Room (AS3-05-23)

About the speaker:

Tatyana “Tanya” Kostochka is a PhD student at the
University of Southern California. Her dissertation
focuses on moods—what they are, how they relate to
the rest of our psychology, how they relate to moods in
art, and so on. She also works on ethics in medieval
Japanese Buddhist philosophy. She is currently a
visiting researcher at the Ryukoku University Research
Center for Buddhist Cultures in Asia.

All are welcome

In this paper I offer a partial defense of absence causation in response to two related issues: (i) the problem of many absences, and (ii) Beebee’s claim that there is no metaphysically respectable, principled criterion that the friend of absence causation can appeal to in response to (i). I argue that holes provide a counterexample to Beebee’s claim, and I articulate the response to the many absences problem suggested by this case. In the final section I suggest ways this response can be developed to account for common-sense judgments about the causal relevance of other cases of absences.

Philosophy Seminar Series
Date: Thursday, 17 November 2016
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: AS3 #05-23
Speaker: Dr Phillip Meadows
Moderator: Dr Qu Hsueh Ming

About the Speaker:

Dr Phillip Meadows is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at UAE University, and have taught previously at Manchester, Keele and UWE, Bristol. His research covers topics in metaphysics and the philosophy of perception, having published on direct realism, spatial perception, audition, and holes. His present research project is to provide a coherent account of the nature of sound, silence and auditory perceptual experience.